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News & Events

HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation is involved in every area that has an impact on people’s livelihoods - water, food and the environment, as well as bridges and roads. Through educational programmes and building democracy, HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation enables disadvantaged people to actively determine and improve their living conditions.

Kosovo

Regional Gender Event

From 12 to 16 October the Eastern Europe Unit organized a Regional Gender Event in Kosovo "Innovation and Creativity Derived from a Gender Diverse Workforce - Promoting the Business Case for Women". Team members from four projects in the region took part in the event to exchange and learn from each other on various issues ranging from ‘The value added of a gender- diverse workforce’ to ‘Repurposing M4P tools for gender: What is the market system of a diverse workforce’.
For more inspiration on the topic, have a look at this video.

Annual Grants Awarding Ceremony

Decentralisation and Support to Municipalities (DEMOS), a project based in Kosovo, supports municipalities to achieve visible and tangible improvements in service delivery, municipal finances and transparency, decentralization and participation of citizens in decision-making. On 22 September 2015 the annual grants awarding ceremony was held to honour grants to fifteen partner municipalities based on their performance. The municipalities of Gračanica/Graçanicë, Pejë/Peć and Shtime/Štimlje were crowned the best performing, while Lipjan/Lipljane, Rahovec/Orahovac and Gračanica/Graçanicë the most improved in the field of service delivery, municipal finances, democratization and transparency.

Negotiations Skills Training

The Eastern European Unit organized a Negotiations Skills Training in Albania from 2nd – 5th February 2015. Almost all projects participated in the training and learned to identify skills that can help to make you a more effective negotiator and to prepare for and manage a negotiation more successfully.
Here’s an interesting video about the 7 deadly sins in negotiation preparation from the organizers of the event:

Annual Brief 2016 for Eastern Europe & Southern Caucasus

Western Balkans Research Foundation to be Established

In the framework of the Western Balkan Process, EU member states and leaders of the region decided at the Trieste Summit held in July, to start the process of establishing a Western Balkans Research Foundation with an envisaged budget of 70 million euros.
Earlier in 2016, PERFORM supported young researchers from the region to present a position paper at the 2nd Joint Science Conference, which pointed out their precarious situation and gave recommendations on how to improve their position in the national science systems.
At the Paris Western Balkans Summit in July 2016, the Heads of State requested the Joint Science Conference of the Western Balkans Process to propose a funding mechanism for excellent young researchers from the Balkans. PERFORM was part of an international Expert Group which was subsequently formed to develop a comprehensive blueprint for a new Western Balkans Research Foundation targeting young scientists.
The Foundation is designed to enable outstanding junior scientists from the Balkans to build research labs and teams within a period of five years through individual grants, which will also allow a training period of one to two years in top research organisations in Europe.
Through these grants, a critical mass of excellent researcher teams will be formed in the Balkans, which will be the driving force of change. The national education and science systems will profit from brain gain, transfer of excellence and sustainable improvement.
PERFORM will further continue to support junior scientists in the region to advocate for improvement of their position based on other recommendations of the Joint Science Conference.

June 2016

Annual Brief 2015 for Eastern Europe & Southern Caucasus

Our Annual Brief 2015 for Eastern Europe and Southern Caucasus is out! The annual brief presents all nine regional projects as well as key developments in cross-cutting areas using various case stories. Our team members across the region have contributed to the content of the report in an effort to share some of our exciting work with you and our partners in the countries. The achievements of our projects are the result of a strong collaboration with donors and local partners and we would like to thank them for their trust and collaboration in 2015 and we look forward to continue working together in 2016. We hope you will enjoy reading the brief!

Regional Newsletter

Our first-ever regional newsletter has just come out. It gives highlights of our projects in the region over the last 9 months and includes links to various recent blogs, articles and documents about our projects, the interventions and experiences in the fields of youth employment, governance, rural development and social science research.

Annual Brief 2014 for Eastern Europe & Southern Caucasus

We are delighted to share with you the Helvetas Annual Brief 2014 for Eastern Europe & Southern Caucasus, providing you with an insight into our work and highlighting key developments and topics that lie at the core of what we do. Our team members across the region have contributed to the content of the report in an effort to share some of our exciting work with you and our partners in the countries.